A few national stories

I usually stick to the news of Luzerne County but a few national stories caught my attention today.

Bush Proposes Law Permitting Line-Item Veto: President Bush, seeking to curb ballooning federal spending, announced today he will propose a new law giving him a line-item veto, the authority to strike a specific item from a federal spending bill without killing the entire legislation......Bush said the veto would help "reduce wasteful spending, reduce the budget deficit and ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely." He said it would "give me the authority to strip special spending and earmarks out of a bill and then send them back to Congress for an up or down vote."

Another empty proposal. This guy has not vetoed a single bill despite threatening to many times. The deficit has reached record levels and the pork keeps flowing. It would take a constitutional amendment to enact this.

Flag burning is back: I have just received word that tomorrow morning, Senator Bill Frist will announce that a constitutional amendment giving Congress the power to ban the physical desecration of the American flag will receive a floor vote in the United States Senate. The vote will occur during the last week of June.

How do you define it? I have never seen anyone actually do such a thing. Well at least they are not screwing with baseball and it keeps them busy.

Iraq: Murtha counters upbeat general: "I wouldn't put a great big smiley face on it, but I would say they're going very, very well from everything you look at." The comments drew criticism that Gen. Peter Pace is glossing over problems in the three-year-old U.S. campaign.
"Why would I believe him?" asked Democratic Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a major critic of the Bush administration's handling of the war. "This administration, including the president, (has) mischaracterized this war for the last two years."